Arts watch.

Dreamy Show

Kristin Hersh Brings Hallucinations To Life And Song At The Double Door

September 05, 1999|By Joshua Klein. Special to the Tribune.

Had Kristin Hersh not been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, one might have assumed as much from listening to her work with Throwing Muses. Back when that band was a college-rock staple, Hersh wrote aggressively dynamic and jaggedly visceral songs as unique as her songwriting method: Hersh, who formed the band while in her late teens, has said that the songs came to her as hallucinations, oppressive visions that could be alleviated only when she brought them to life as music.

Hersh may have been young, but Throwing Muses wasn't kids' stuff. Even the name of the band evoked an unstable mix of violence and inspiration.

Yet Hersh also has a quieter side, as evidenced by the three hauntingly acoustic solo albums she released before amicably disbanding Throwing Muses. While Hersh's new "Sky Motel" is a return to rock music, at the Double Door Thursday night Hersh performed alone with just an acoustic guitar as accompaniment. For a singer already so emotionally naked, the setting was almost unsettling. Hersh may have been acoustic, but her songs were hardly gentle. Her secret weapon is still her strong voice, which veered quickly from a whisper to a hoarse, crackling howl that could not be talked over, no matter how hard the yack-happy people at the bar tried.

Hersh may have ended Throwing Muses, but she obviously hasn't abandoned the songs she wrote for the band. Despite her recent string of solo material, Hersh drew mainly from her work in the Muses. "Hate My Way" and "Delicate Cutters" were explosions of emotion, even if Hersh tried to shrug off the passion of the former as the immature work of a young college student. She even dug out "Cry Baby Cry," an early EP track that's thankfully included on the essential "In A Doghouse" collection that was released last year.

However, Hersh's newer songs didn't suffer in comparison to her formative peaks. Stripped down to their barest essentials, the new songs were in fact remarkably of a part with the old. "Echo," with its call of "I crave the very loudest sound," sounded fine without the benefit of "Sky Motel's" studio embellishments, and both musically and lyrically the imposing darkness that clouded Hersh's early work has yet to dissipate. "You have to look close to see what this disease has done to me," she sang in "Cathedral Heat," begging for still more interpretations of her generally oblique words.

Though Hersh may never truly exorcise the demons that have plagued her, with each cathartic performance she seems to get closer to purging what must be inside her mind. "Was it me, or the cold/Made you give up hope?" she asked in "Faith." Yet Hersh's courage in facing the frightful reality of her harrowing songs showed that hope may not be as lost as her lyrics imply.